Judge weighs last-minute request to dismiss voter ID suit

State claims plaintiffs have no standing to sue. Development delays closing arguments.

July 31, 2013|By Steve Esack, Call Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG — Closing arguments in a long-running lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania's 2012 voter ID law were postponed until Thursday while the judge considers the state's request to dismiss the case.

Assistant Pennsylvania Attorney General Timothy Keating asked Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard L. McGinley on Wednesday to consider the state's written legal argument to toss the lawsuit. The request claims plaintiffs have not proven a legal right to challenge the law.

The law, which has been put on hold until the lawsuit is settled, requires voters to produce state-sanctioned photo identification cards prior to casting ballots Election Day. ID cards can be a driver's license, non-driver's license, some nursing home and college ID cards and a special voting card the Pennsylvania Department of State has created specifically to better enforce the law.

After the hearing, Keating's co-counsel, D. Alicia Hickok, a private attorney under contract with the state, said such dismissal requests are standard procedure but rarely granted. However, Hickok said, the dismissal request may have a greater chance of success if McGinley follows precedent set by a Feb. 26 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Clapper v. Amnesty International USA.

In that 5-4 ruling, the high court said human-rights groups, lawyers, activists and journalists had no legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of warrantless government surveillance activities under the 2008 version of the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Based on the Clapper ruling, Hickok said, the plaintiffs — the League of Women Voters, NAACP, Homeless Advocacy Project and two elderly voters — have not produced evidence that they are hurt by the law.

But one of the plaintiffs' lead attorneys disagreed.

Jennifer R. Clarke, executive director of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, said the plaintiffs have shown evidence that they have been harmed because some of their members cannot get the proper IDs.

However, Clarke said, even if McGinley agrees that the plaintiffs have no legal basis, McGinley still has to rule on the fundamental issue about the law's constitutionality, which has no bearing under the Clapper ruling.

In the courtroom, McGinley seemed to hint he would not dismiss the suit. Unless the state's legal brief was overwhelmingly convincing, McGinley said, he would start closing arguments at 10 a.m. Thursday.

The lawsuit was filed shortly after Republican Gov. Tom Corbett signed a bill passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in March 2012. Corbett and lawmakers reasoned that the bill would stop voter fraud.

Democrats and civil-rights groups claimed the law was aimed at preventing minorities and others from casting votes for Democratic President Barack Obama who was up for re-election in November of that year.

A Commonwealth Court ruling eventually put the law on hold until the lawsuit was settled. The trial began July 15 and has gone on longer than anticipated, as both sides have presented arguments and statistical evidence over the number of voters who may or may not have the ability to get ID cards.

The plaintiffs estimated that at least 500,000 registered voters do not have proper ID based on a statistical analysis of voting records. The state argues that estimation is too high and faulty, even as the state admits it made mistakes in trying to implement the law prior to Nov. 2012.